Information storage systems may include a variety of different hardware and software components. For instance, a storage system may include one or more storage controllers, where each of the storage controllers provides the low-level control for a plurality of physical storage drives. The storage system may also include network connections and other items that are ancillary to the storage functionality of the system. Storage systems continue to become more and more complex, with storage controllers hosting an increasing number of logical storage volumes and storage controllers being clustered rather than simply standing alone. There is currently a need for a management application that monitors assets of storage systems in an efficient and intuitive manner.
Some current storage monitoring systems gather operational data from multitudes of storage items in a given storage system. Examples of storage items includes virtual volumes, storage drive hardware, storage controllers, network interfaces, and the like. A storage monitoring system then logs the operational data for the storage system in a database. In case of a failure, an administrator of the storage system may access the log of operational data to determine when errors occurred, what the errors were, and which devices had no errors.
Viewing data logs of operational data has been somewhat effective in current systems to provide an administrator with actionable information. However, the data log as displayed is text-based with status and timestamps, and text-based data has the limitation of not being optimally intuitive nor quickly comprehensible. Accordingly, there is a need for a more intuitive storage monitoring system.